Laundry Man

something I shouldn’t, or if I mess up things I didn’t even know were happening, you’re going to think back to this afternoon and remember how you blew your chance to prevent it.”

Stanley swiveled his chair slightly away from me and studied his left hand briefly as if he had just realized how interesting it really was.

“I think you should have a little history here, Jack. There probably are a few things you ought to know.”

I nodded and after a short pause Stanley started talking, choosing his words with obvious care.

“It is true that my former law firm has done work over the years for various branches of the United States government, the kind of work that requires a special form of trust. It makes exotic copy in the press to talk about front companies and foreign banks, but the plain fact is that the world is a complicated and dangerous place. As we all understand domestic law enforcement cannot be done solely by uniformed officers cruising the streets in brightly painted cars, we must also accept a nation’s international affairs cannot always be conducted by announcing one’s undertakings publicly.”

Stanley had consciously or unconsciously slipped into his college lecturer’s cadence.

“Consequently, when national interests require a country to work quietly beyond its own borders to defend its security, it is commonly accepted that such work is frequently undertaken through the structure of apparently private businesses. That is a convenient arrangement for both the country that is pursuing its interests and the country in which those interests are located. It gives both of them the security of deniability, something essential to the conduct of modern foreign policy. In any event, these private businesses require organization and administration, which obviously cannot be done by the governments and such tasks are frequently undertaken by discreet, well-connected law firms who are experienced in such matters.”

I liked Stanley, and I usually enjoyed his lectures, but this time I wasn’t in the mood to learn how to make a watch. I just wanted to know what the hell time it was.

“Are you saying your old firm is in the business of camouflaging the FBI behind corporate front companies, Stanley? How about the CIA? You got a few of their fronts in your client files, too?”

Stanley sighed deeply.

“I am trying to communicate to you the subtlety of such an undertaking in all its forms, Jack, but-if you must put it so crudely-I guess the answer is yes. Yes, my former firm has had a long-standing relationship with the government of the United States. And, yes, from time to time it has represented companies through which the FBI, the CIA, the DEA, and even quite a few agencies you’ve almost certainly never heard of have conducted their affairs here in Asia.”

My first reaction was to laugh out loud.

“You mean In The Pink Inc is really a CIA front?”

Stanley didn’t smile, not even a little.

“What does Howard the Roach have to do with any of this?” I asked.

“I must remind you again, Jack, that I retired several years ago. The firm’s current activities are entirely out of my hands.”

“Yeah, sure.”

“You don’t have to believe me, but it is true.”

Stanley sounded genuinely wounded I wasn’t taking him at his word and he sat silently for a while after that, apparently weighing just how much he was actually going to have to tell me to keep me happy and quiet.

“Howard once laundered money for a variety of people in which the United States government had an interest,” Stanley resumed after a moment. “The short answer is that ultimately he got caught doing it. He was then persuaded to turn his talents to the public good rather than face prosecution.”

I figured I had better push Stanley’s narrative along before old age overtook us both.

“So you’re telling me that Jello was right, aren’t you, Stanley? Howard and Dollar were laundering money for someone, but it wasn’t for Burmese drug dealers. It was for an American intelligence operation.”

“Jello was only half right at best. Howard and Dollar did manipulate large sums of money from time to time, it is true, but they always did it with the full knowledge of the United States government and only in support of legitimate American interests. You can’t call that money laundering.”

Stanley shook his head firmly. I wondered if that was entirely for my benefit or if some of the effort was going into convincing himself.

“No,” he repeated, “you really cannot call what Howard and Dollar were doing money laundering.”

I didn’t bother to argue with Stanley and instead pressed the more important point.

“So who were they working for? Was it the FBI?”

“It would be better, Jack, if we just left it-”

“Oh Jesus, I get it now.”

“I doubt-” Stanley began, but I cut him off before he could get wound up again.

“Stanley, let’s be absolutely clear about this. Are you telling me Howard was laundering money for some cockamamie CIA operation and Dollar was helping him do it? Is that what they were going to ask me to get involved in?”

“You’ve been watching too many movies, Jack.” Stanley’s voice was level, but I could hear an edge in it now. “Don’t try to reduce the real world to something simple enough for teenagers to understand while they’re stuffing popcorn in their mouths. You’ll end up looking like an idiot every time.”

“And don’t jerk me around like some dimwitted student, Stanley. You and your little buddies were having a great time playing spook until somebody took it all too seriously and killed Howard. That scared the shit out of Dollar because he knew he might be next on the list, so he took off. How am I doing so far?”

“That is not right!” Stanley sounded seriously angry now. “And I will not say that because it is not true!”

“Then you can explain it however you think you should,” I said.

“What makes you think that I have to explain anything to you, Jack?”

“Because you don’t want me to mess anything up, Stanley. You’re up to your neck in some deep shit here and you really don’t want me to keep asking questions about it.”

“Will you keep asking questions?”

“You bet your ass I will. I will keep asking questions until I understand exactly what the hell I’m involved in here. Am I coming through loud and clear?”

Stanley gave a heavy sigh as if all the air had suddenly been let out of him and then his eyes went dead.

A stillness settled over the office after that and we both sat for a while without saying anything else. Outside the windows the sun was hanging just above a thin wisp of clouds streaking the horizon somewhere beyond the river. Then the setting edge of the sun touched the clouds, the room darkened slightly, and grayness filtered over us like a warm mist.

THIRTY ONE

Stanley turned toward me. He leaned forward on his elbows, his eyes seeking mine.

“The loss of British control over Hong Kong was a tremendous problem for the West,” he said. “We tried to pass it off as inconsequential, but that was not the case. Hong Kong had been our only real window on China since the end of World War II. It provided our best, sometimes our only access. In one stroke we were cut off from the few assets we had in China and we largely lost our ability to collect and evaluate intelligence data from there.”

I had a sudden flash of memory, a vivid image of balancing in the bow of the Star Ferry with Archie Ward as we wallowed through the oily swells of Victoria Harbour.

“Everything in the biggest nation on earth, developments that ranged from stepped-up drug smuggling operations by the Chinese army to the production status of intercontinental missiles capable of delivering nuclear warheads anywhere in the world, would soon be a complete mystery to us. The West had almost no human intelligence sources in China anymore, and those few sources we had we were desperate to keep supporting regardless of the loss of Hong Kong as a point of access. We had to find a way to keep supplying our assets with the resources they needed to keep operating.”